Thoughts on Leadership, Life and Fun stuff

Archive for January, 2009

“I think our pastor is spending too much time on his blog,” said the voice on the other side of the phone. I had to disagree with the caller and spend some time talking with him about why blogging was one of the best way for his pastor to spend his time, even if it meant that he had to cut some of his office time short or send someone in his place to make a hospital visit.When done well, social media will help a pastor connect with his congregation in a level that, previously, he could only do with a select few. My pastor, for example, Pete Wilson, is an avid blogger, Twitterer, and Facebook user. He has over 6,000 people who daily visit his blog and whose lives Pete speaks into, even though our church only runs 2,500 people in attendance. I keep up with him mostly through…

Almighty God, our Father:Everything we see, and everything we can’t see, exists because of you alone. It all comes from you, it all belongs to you, it all exists for your glory. History is your story. The Scripture tells us, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” And you are the compassionate and merciful one. And you are loving to everyone you have made. Now today we rejoice not only in America’s peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time, we celebrate a hinge point of history with the inauguration of our first African American president of the United States. We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequaled possibility, where a son of an African immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership. And we know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting…

We have just launched the latest redesign of Cross Point Church’s website. I love the way the site looks and the way it accounts for multiple campuses. But my favorite feature is how simple the site makes to share content anywhere online. As a part of our MediaMachine back end tool, all the code and images, including the Cross Point branded player, is generated through a simple interface that the church staff controls. We believe it should be very simple for Cross Point staff to create tools such as evites, banners, links and embeddable video or audio. We also believe that it should be simple for anyone visiting the site to share such content with their networks as well. However, since the player itself is branded and always links back to Cross Point’s site, the content is never out of context. “Who is this? Where does this come from?” are…

It’s a new year and this time I decided not to make any new year’s resolutions. Instead, I’m going to make new year’s promises. While some might say this is simply a matter of semantics, it’s important to me to make the distinction. It’s easy for me to break a resolution, but a promise, well, that’s a big deal. In 2009: 1. I promise to say yes to God’s prompting on my life. I’ll say yes to divine appointments even after a long day when I’m looking forward to flying home with hopes of no one sitting next to me. 2. I promise to say yes to my family every time I can. It’s easy to shut down my wife and sons with the simple, “no.” But I promise to yes every time I can and only to say no when there’s a better yes waiting for them. 3. I…